The invention relates generally to industrial process control systems and more specifically to software used to assist industrial process engineers with specifying and managing process devices.
Industrial processes often involve a material such as a fluid moving through pipes and tanks to transform less valuable materials into more valuable and useful products such as petroleum, chemicals, paper, and food. For example an oil refinery can process crude oil into gasoline, fuel oil, and other petrochemicals. Industrial process control systems use process devices such as measurement instruments known as transmitters for sensing and measuring process parameters such as pressure, flow, temperature, and level along with control devices such as valves, pumps and motors to control the flow of process materials.
When process plants are designed, process requirements are identified for specific points in the process plant, known as Tags, for process devices to measure or control the process. Usually an engineer will evaluate process requirements in order to specify a particular process device. Design engineers specifying process devices for a process plant evaluate process requirements using a variety of computer programs including 3-D modeling and process studies by simulating PID control functions, calculators, and process device manufacturer catalogs to make technology decisions and specify complex specific process devices. Complex process devices have billions of manufacturing combinations that result from the many technology decisions made by design engineers or mandated by the manufacturer, for example, a Rosemount(copyright) model 3051 with remote seals has over four billion potential manufacturing combinations. Once the process device is specified, the process device must be ordered which is usually yet another task for a design or procurement engineer. This procedure often involves reentry of the data by the design engineer and is time consuming, expensive, and error prone.
When the specified process device arrives at the process plant it is not uncommon that the built process device is slightly different from the ordered process device due to the large number of potential manufacturing combinations or to the fact that process data has changed. The differences between the ordered process device and the built process device are evaluated by inspecting the built process device and comparing it against the specification of the ordered process device. A manual comparison is often time consuming, expensive and error prone.
In the event a process device fails and requires replacement, a process plant engineer will likely need to order an identical replacement process device. To ensure the replacement process device is identical, the process plant engineer will likely need to locate the specification sheet for the process device, determine if differences in the built process device should be incorporated into the replacement process device, and then send the specification information to the process device manufacturer. This reorder procedure for a replacement process device is time consuming, expensive, and error prone. Further, in the event that the process data has changed, the engineer will need to reevaluate the instrument specification.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for software that simplifies the design engineer""s specification and ordering process. There is also a need for software to automate the comparison between ordered process devices and built process devices to simplify process plant decisions concerning built process devices. Finally, there is a need for software that simplifies reordering a process device when a replacement process device is required.
The invention is directed to an apparatus, method, and medium readable by a computer processor that satisfies the need for software to simplify specification of process devices and management of built process devices. Aspects of software having features of the invention include the following sequences of instructions: device requirement instructions that receive process requirements to define the operating requirements for a process device; device performance instructions that provide performance of the device of the stated condition, device selection instructions that evaluate the process requirements against predetermined process device data and define a specified process device meeting the process requirements; device order instructions that place the specified process device into an ordered database that can be sent to a process device manufacturer to initiate building of the specified process device; device evaluation instructions that evaluate a built process device to obtain built process device data representing the built process device""s performance characteristics; and device management instructions that use the built process device data to create a built database to make decisions regarding the built process device.
In one embodiment of the invention, device comparison instructions compare the ordered database with the built database stored in memory to create a discrepancy database that is used to determine whether the built process device meets process requirements.
In another embodiment of the invention, device maintenance instructions receive a request for a replacement built process device, recall the built process device data from the built database and order a replacement built process device from the process device manufacturer.